2021 Rabies "Rage" Virus Pandemic
Background: The modern rabies virus has been around for the past 1500 years. Rabies is a virus that effects the nervous system and is transmitted through the saliva of animals and less commonly through contact with human saliva. It is almost always fatal, however this tells the tale of the virus that mutated: Sometime in July 2020, the CDC and the World Health Organization reported a rise in rabies cases in animals but not yet Humans, and in a CDC laboratory in California, scientists discovered a rabies mutation, tested the mutated virus on a laboratory mouse and noticed strange behavior in the mouses. They would discover that the mouses would act much more aggressively. Two scientists were working in the laboratory at the time, and one of them accidentally got bitten by the infected mouse. Suddenly and by surprise, the infected scientist individual immediately collapsed to the laboratory floor after being bitten, seemingly appearing dead. There was no pulse, in fact the individual who is now called Patient Zero was not breathing. The other scientist panicked and checked on the dead scientist who suddenly came back to life, grabbed the alarmed scientist in and bit him on the neck. Now, the two scientists were both infected at this point and were already showing symptoms. Immediately they transformed into a zombie like state. At this point in time, the culprit rabies virus, which had mutated had become possibly airborne. All hell broke loose when Patient Zero started mindlessly chasing other lab workers in the area, and subsequently the whole building in which the lab was in. Countless lab workers were bitten by Patient Zero. The other infected scientist was shot in the chest, but didn't die. Another shot was fired from a security officer into the head, effectively killing the zombie-like individual. By now, there were nearly 20 infected individuals; some of which escaped the building into the parking lot. Five people were killed, and became infected. The next day later, most of the infected individuals had been shot and killed by a fast acting police force, seemingly stopping the infection from spreading. The building where the virus broke out was now quarantined. The World Health Organization deemed the virus to be airborne, and stated that everybody within a 200 mile radius of ground zero is infected, but the virus lies dormant until the host dies turning the host into "zombies", which the WHO appropriately named because of the virus' similarities to zombie viruses in movies. The zombie virus now started rapidly spreading from person to person, and became out of control. Up to 100 people a day were dying, and coming back to life and eating anyone they chase after. By a couple weeks later, over 5,000 people became infected, and the WHO and CDC predicted a scary scenario and predicted that the chance of a global zombie outbreak to be 75%. August 2020 Despite Humanity's best efforts to keep the infected from reaching Los Angeles, their attempts have failed. During the first week of August in 2020, a horde of nearly 1,500 infected race towards Los Angeles, running faster than any non-infected Human could. Nearly 2,000 National Guard troops hurry to eliminate the horde of zombies and successfully do so on August 7th. However, on August 9th, an infected individual was reported in the city of Denver, arriving from a flight from Los Angeles in the ensuing chaos but was quickly neutralized, preventing nationwide spread for a brief period. Some of the zombies from the August 5th horde remained; approximately 15-25 zombies started infecting people in a Los Angeles suburb. The city quickly realized what was going on, and panicked as people rapidly fell and were killed, but of course came back to life. On August 8th, the city was in trouble as 200,000 inhabitants of Los Angeles became infected. National Guard troops were once again dispatched but were quickly overwhelmed and eaten by zombies. This was the first widespread outbreak of many to come. By August 15th, the whole city of Los Angeles was overrun by zombies and over a million people evacuated, but the remaining survivors quickly fell to the hordes of thousands of zombies. A 200 mile wide area, nearly 500 miles long stretched from ground zero to northern California. On August 19th, the number of zombified persons reached 1 million. Though not yet a pandemic, the virus continued to mutate, getting more and more lethal and contagious. Multiple states up and down the West Coast issued a state of emergency and evacuated east. Eventually the zombie outbreak slowed down whilst the virus mutated. The zombies had a tough time surviving in the southwest, as they starved due to lack of Humans, low humidity and high heat. Luckily for the west coast, a heatwave was occurring shortly after the outbreak started, killing off most of the weakened zombies. September through December 2020 On September 2nd, the CDC announced that the range of the airborne zombie virus had reached Las Vegas, Denver and all the way up to Idaho. This is when the second zombie wave originated in Las Vegas, when the first cases of infected people in Las Vegas occurred in hospitals. A hospital patient was dying of cancer when they abruptly turned zombie and all hell broke loose once again. The now zombie patient got up and killed three people, who then became zombies and a domino effect ensued. 5 zombies became 50 zombies in a matter of minutes, and ten minutes later the whole hospital was overrun by zombies. The zombies broke loose of the hospital and overran police who were trying to stop the infection from spreading, killing them. In just two days, the whole city of Las Vegas, a city of around 650,000 people was taken over by zombies. As summer faded away, it became much easier for zombies to travel and reach Denver by September 17th. Of 650,000 people, only 200 survivors escape the city of Las Vegas elsewhere. Meanwhile on the East Coast, the infection has not reached there yet, but a project was started in the city of Cape Canaveral, Florida. '' In Cape Canaveral, Florida, the U.S Military set aside funds to aid in building a giant blimp that will be modified to be suitable for temporary living for up to five years, suspended in the air until a cure is found. It uses solar power and generators to generate electricity and alternatives for fossil fuels. Back in Denver, Colorado, a massive horde of zombies, 300,000 zombies in total are heading straight towards the city and the disease gets even more contagious. Denver, a city of about 800,000 people. Yet again, the zombies swarm the city of Denver but this time the U.S Military has started carpet bombing the hordes of zombies. The strategy works but, with a lot of collateral damage, the carpet bombings are halted. Half the city's population became zombies before they were wiped out by the bombs. A total of 400,000 zombies are killed by the carpet bombings. However the disease's contagiousness has reached a whole new level. The disease starts rapidly spreading north and east, and by September 30th the disease has reached mid-western states including western Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota but not North Dakota (yet). On the 2nd week of October, the disease has reached the Great Lakes, and millions of people die and become zombies. The U.S Military is in shambles by then, and is rapidly dwindling. By the end of December, 90% of the United States' population has turned into zombies as the disease is now spreading by airplane and water and reaches across the Atlantic Ocean. ''The probability of a global pandemic is now 100 percent. 2021 The beginning of the new year marks a rising global pandemic. By the middle of January, 2021, 95% of the United States' population were zombies. The disease has spread across the Atlantic Ocean, Bermuda had been taken over by zombies on January 10th, 2021. The disease has also reached Europe during the month of January, turning millions of people in the U.K into zombies. On January 19th, 90% of the United Kingdom had been infected already. The U.K grounded all flights from all major airports to and from other destinations on January 23rd after an incident in Moscow. This would be very important to prevent the disease from spreading, or at least slow it down dramatically. Unfortunately, on January 22nd, a flight bringing 76 passengers to Moscow from London had two passengers who were infected. As long as they did not die, they wouldn't turn into a zombie. But somehow, the virus had mutated so much that now the virus takes just a few hours to turn an infected host into a zombie, regardless if they were alive or dead. The disease got much deadlier this way. Shortly after landing in Moscow, the two infected passengers turned into zombies, sending the whole entire airport into chaos in a matter of minutes. In the ensuing chaos, the zombies attacked many of the citizens and the passengers at the airport, and the entire airport had to shut down before being completely overrun by zombies. However, since it was the middle of January, the disease's progress quickly came to a halt in sub-zero temperatures. The airport remained quarantined until the zombies died of starvation. Since the U.K grounded all flights, the disease's progress had slowed down, but only slightly. More cities followed suit, increasing the effectiveness. Meanwhile in Australia, top scientists are working on a cure for the outbreak. Two weeks have elapsed since the events that unfolded in western Europe and Moscow. On February 9th, the number of infected zombies worldwide had reached 1 billion. The disease enters a new and violent assault all over the Mediterranean region. On Valentines day, zombies were reported in multiple European countries. At this point, almost all of Germany and France are occupied by zombies. On February 15th, zombies began taking over the Romanian city of Bucharest, the Hungarian capital of Budapest and took over both cities in just three days. Then the number of zombies had reached 1.25 billion and was climbing rapidly. The zombies encountered little resistance because it happened in a very short timespan and people were barely ready, and brutally killed hundreds of thousands of citizens who subsequently turned into zombies. As a result, the two countries had to shut down their airports, followed by Czechoslovakia, Poland and Spain. Italy grounded flights at all the major airports. In Australia, scientists had been working on a cure since the outbreak began, studying the zombies and using them for experiments. None of the zombies escaped into the public (zombies who tried were immediately mercy killed), but the scientists made groundbreaking discoveries about the virus. They discovered that the virus had evolved over one thousand times from rabies in just one year, a record fast mutation. The scientists had prior experience specializing in viruses similar to rabies before the apocalypse. After two months of research, they were very close to a cure when they hit a wall: How is the vaccine going to be transmitted to the zombies and cure them? It took a while, but eventually the scientists found the best way was to have uninfected Humans take the vaccine, bite infected zombies therefore turning them back into Humans. On May 12th, 2021, winter had released its grip on the northern countries, and the virus was able to spread into the Siberian wilderness. Thousands of miles away in North Carolina, an early hurricane had struck the southern coast of South Carolina, unearthing a World War 2 nuclear bomb that must've fallen from an airplane during tests that were done before the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Near the city of Myrtle Beach, the bomb exploded with a force of just less than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, leveling nearby towns in a 20 mile radius. Myrtle Beach was completely destroyed, and up to this point there were approximately 32,000 uninfected survivors remaining in the Contiguous United States. The nuclear blast killed nearly 12,000 people in a 200 mile radius, and nuclear fallout reached D.C before being carried east by a shift in the jet stream. Half of the people that died as a result of the nuclear explosion became radioactive zombies, which an alive Human would only have to get a couple feet away to die in a few hours if exposed long enough. Now only 20,000 people remained in the United States, and the U.S president, Donald J. Trump had been staying underground in a large bunker, under the White House where zombies could not reach the food supply that was being grown in greenhouses with artificial sunlight lamps. Vigilante mercenaries started popping up about a few months after the outbreak had started, and were responsible for killing up to 15% of the zombies in the United States between July 2020, and May 2021. By early June, 2021, the number of zombies still in the United States had dropped down to around 120 million. The U.S Military had been planning to launch thermonuclear bombs that would not release as much radiation but instead be largely thermal radiation based. On June 13th, 2021, 15 thermonuclear bombs were launched as an all-out assault on three quarters of the zombie population in the U.S, killing over 50 million zombies. Collateral damage was minimal, at about 1,000 people per five thermonuclear bombs. By the end of June, only about 18 million zombies were left on the United States, and 99 percent of all zombies in Alaska were wiped out and left to rot. But now, the virus has finally stopped mutating, and scientists finally found the vaccine for the zombie outbreak. Meanwhile in Australia, on July 15th, they finally discovered the cure for the aptly named LZN-1 virus, short for Lyssavirus Zombie Type 1. In Darwin, Australia, the Australian military had set up a operation point base, watching out for survivors that may be escaping from Papua New Guinea, a country that had only recently become overrun by the infected. Most southeast Asia countries were swarmed by zombies already, and by July 20th the world population of survivors had dropped below 1 billion, but had steadied around 950 million since the cure was announced. On July 24th, the world's first vaccinated Human was introduced to a zombie. Much to the scientists' surprise, the zombie did not attack the Human for the first time in history since the outbreak began. They discovered that the vaccine makes Humans practically invisible to zombies. A horde of zombies would seemingly run towards a vaccinated patient attacking them, but they would actually run right past them, not caring for the Human with the vaccine. So, the scientists mass-produced the vaccine, and soon thousands of people in Australia received the shot with the cure, reproduced but that did nothing but stall the population decline. Over the course of three months, the outbreak eventually slowed so much that the virus was losing its contagiousness, and at this rate be fully eradicated before June 2022 according to the predictions made by the scientists who were hailed the "heroes of Humanity". November 16th, 2021 Since the cure was discovered, the worldwide zombie count had dropped to below 1 billion for the first time since February 9th, dropping below the number of worldwide survivors still alive at 947 million zombies and approximately 955 million survivors. But in Florida, a disaster is unfolding. The blimp that was launched right before the zombies overtook the entire East Coast had sustained electrical damage to the generators from constant lightning storms, even though the blimp had lightning rods that would channel the electricity to the ground. Bonus if zombies are electrocuted and killed. The blimp had started to deflate due to a decently sized hole on one side of the blimp. The blimp floats because it is primarily helium that keeps it afloat for long periods of time, but due to the air leak the aircraft had started to slowly sink towards the ground, where thousands of zombies were still mindlessly wandering, looking for their next meal of Humans. Several days went by as the helium slowly leaked out through the hole, and by December 2nd, the bottom of the blimp had touched the ground with a few hundred people still inside and zombies noticed the commotion and started chasing after the sounds, which were coming from Humans. Luckily for the Humans, the zombies would have to get through a sturdy door to get inside, and the survivors had weapons. There were no windows on the blimp so the only way to shoot the zombies was through a bottom hatch which was blocked by the ground. The survivors came up with an idea and decided to shoot the walls of the aircraft to make holes so they could see the zombies and kill them. This was unsuccessful as the zombies outnumbered the survivors and breached their way into the blimp, causing mass chaos and panic. It only took several minutes, as half of the survivors became one of them and nearly killed all but 15 survivors who escaped through a hole with weapons. Since nearly 100% of the zombies in the U.S had perished, the survivors were able to easily pick the zombies off one by one. The zombie outbreak has completely stopped since the vaccine was created, and in Sydney, Australia, the international airport was temporarily reopened. Hawaii is the first place to have the disease completely eradicated from the island chain. Early morning on January 18th, in the middle of summer, Sydney International Airport (YSSY) was reopened, for a short period of time to allow military cargo planes, C-17 Globemaster 3s' to depart the airport for multiple destinations across southeast Asia and Hawaii, dropping packages on parachute to remaining survivors. This method was surprisingly successful, and within a few days over five thousand people had the vaccine and would receive weapons to mercilessly kill the remaining infected and completely eliminate almost all zombies from Hawaii, which as a result became the absolute first place to completely get rid of the disease, a major achievement at the time. In Italy, which was still overrun by hundreds of thousands of zombies, an airport in Rome also opened for a short period of time to allow a C-17 plane to land with an entire crew of vaccinated pilots and passengers who would unload the plane, and shoot the infected. Over the course of two months, over 100 million zombies had been eliminated by the vaccinated population in Europe. But in America, they still had not reached the United States yet. In South America, the disease finally halted after killing an astonishing 410 million citizens and turning them into zombies. In third world countries such as Venezuela and many other Latin American countries, the disease spread like never before, killing 98.7 percent of the entire population of the entire region called South America. They finally reached America in March of 2022. The End of the Zombie Apocalypse More than 75% of the world's infected population quickly died off, or were killed by survivors who received the vaccine. The only place that had not been affected by the zombie apocalypse was Antarctica, and for the first time in recorded history, Switzerland got unlucky and nearly all of the country's population died and became the infected. The total count of zombies remaining worldwide had dropped below 100 million, and up to 15,000 zombies were dying each day due to starvation and 45,000 killed. By May 2022, the worldwide zombie outbreak was almost over. On May 18th, the CDC and the WHO announced that the worldwide zombie population had dropped from 50 million to just under 10 million in two weeks. The world rejoiced and announced their prayers that the apocalypse would end soon. And for the first time in a long time, terrorists and Americans would work alongside each other to kill the remaining infected population, friends and enemies uniting to fight for their survival for the next week or so until the outbreak officially and finally ended on May 23rd, 2022. The zombie population had dropped just below 1,000. It was over. Effects of the Zombie Apocalypse When Patient Zero first discovered the mutation and the zombie virus breached the laboratory and escaped into the general public, the average death rate during the peak of the apocalypse was almost 450,000 people per day, an astonishing number. The thermonuclear bombs and the nuclear bomb that went off in South Carolina cooled the climate down 0.6 degrees celsius. The world population reached their lowest in December of 2021, with only 952 million surviving Humans in the entire world. The population didn't surpass 1 billion until 2025, and didn't return to pre-outbreak levels until around 2100. The apocalypse almost caused the extinction of the entire Human race just because of a mutation in the rabies virus.